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The Disappointed: Millerite Adventists and Their “New World”

by Kevin M. Burton, 2015

Thousands of Millerite Adventists expected to ascend to heaven on Tuesday, October 22, 1844. The next day brought great disappointment, however, as Christ did not return. Hiram Edson captured the experience of many when he wrote:
    "Our fondest hopes and expectations were blasted, and such a spirit of weeping came over us as I never experienced before. It seemed that the loss of all earthly friends could have been no comparison. We wept, and wept, till the day dawn."

    "I mused in my own heart, saying, My advent experience has been the richest and brightest of all my christian experience. If this had proved a failure, what was the rest of my christian experience worth? Has the Bible proved a failure? Is there no God—no heaven—no golden home city—no paradise? Is all this but a cunningly devised fable? Is there no reality to our fondest hopes and expectation of these things? And thus we had something to grieve and weep over, if all our fond hopes were lost. And as I said, we wept till the day dawn."1

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1. Hiram Edson, undated manuscript of his life and experience, quoted in George R. Knight, William Miller and the Rise of Adventism (Nampa, ID: Pacific Press, 2010), 184.

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